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The myth of secular tolerance by John Coffey Religion is the tragedy of mankind. It appeals to all that is noblest, purest, loftiest in the human spirit, and yet there scarcely exists a religion which has not been responsible for wars, tyrannies and the suppression of the truth. Religion is not kind, it is cruel. A. N. Wilson1 Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. Jesus of Nazareth2 Summary The resurgence of religious violence at the start of the twenty-first century has reinforced the myth of secular tolerance – the notion that whereas religious believers are instinctively intolerant, tolerance comes naturally to the secular mind. This paper challenges the myth. It suggests that secular people are not immune from the temptation to persecute and vilify others, and argues that the volume 12 Christian Gospel fostered the rise of religious toleration. Introduction number 3 On 15 September 2001, four days after the destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York, Professor Richard Dawkins blamed the tragedy on something he called ‘religion’. Religion, he suggested, is ‘a ready-made system of mind control which has been honed over centuries’, and ‘teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is september 2003 not the end’. It is thus ideally suited to brainwashing ‘testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive to get a woman in this world [who] might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next’. By holding out the promise of an afterlife, religion devalues this life, and makes the world ‘a very dangerous place’. Dawkins ISSN 1361-7710 issued a stark warning: ‘To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.’3 In the wake of 9/11 Dawkins was widely praised for his ‘courageous’ statement, and other well-known commentators joined his private crusade/jihad against reli- gion. The Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee was just as stentorian: ‘The only good Writing group religion is a moribund religion: only when the faithful are weak are they tolerant and Denis Alexander PhD peaceful. The horrible history of Christianity shows that whenever religion grabs John Coffey PhD temporal power it turns lethal. Those who believe theirs is the only way, truth and Paul Mills PhD light will kill to create their heavens on earth if they get the chance.’4 The chorus Michael Ovey MTh MA was swelled by Matthew Parris in the Spectator, who theorised that Christianity and Julian Rivers LLM Islam were potentially violent because of two common features: a claim to univer- Michael Schluter PhD sality and a belief in the afterlife, which puts ‘another world’ before this one. By Christopher Townsend MA contrast, secular people who placed all their hopes in humanity and in the ‘here and Margaret Wilson BA DipTh now’ would not sacrifice temporary peace and prosperity for eternal glory. ‘Godlessness’, concluded Parris, ‘is a humanising force’.5 Donations It is easy to understand why these vigorous polemics against religion were The Jubilee Centre published after the attack on the Twin Towers. Secular commentators felt the need 3 Hooper Street, Cambridge CB1 2 NZ to vent their frustration at the religious zeal which had apparently motivated the Tel: 01223 566319 suicide bombers. They were, however, anxious to avoid charges of Islamophobia. Fax: 01223 566359 Attacking Islam was taboo, but attacking religion per se was acceptable. E-mail: [email protected] Condemning one-sixth of the world’s population was irresponsible; incriminating www.jubilee-centre.org/cambridge_papers three-quarters of it was ‘courageous’. Registered Charity No. 288783 Underlying the polemics of Dawkins, Toynbee and Parris was what we might 1 A. N. Wilson, Against Religion: Why we should live without it, Chatto & Windus, 1991. 2 Matt. 5:44–45. 3 R. Dawkins, ‘Religion’s misguided missiles’, The Guardian, 15 September 2001, p.20. 4P. Toynbee, ‘Last chance to speak out’, The Guardian, 5 October 2001, p.21. 5 M. Parris, ‘Belief in paradise is a recipe for hell on earth’, The Spectator, 22 September 2001. call ‘the myth of secular tolerance’. The myth is not that secular discourse in modern societies, for he combined a commitment to people can be tolerant, for often they are. Rather, the myth of tolerance with an equally strong commitment to free (and aggres- secular tolerance is that tolerance comes naturally to the secular sive) speech. As he famously said, ‘I disagree with what you say, person, whilst intolerance comes naturally to the religious but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ In many ways, believer. The myth suggests that simply by virtue of being secu- this has been a positive legacy, for it is surely a mistake to think lar, one is somehow immune from the temptation to vilify and that when we sign up for toleration we forfeit the right to engage persecute ‘the other’. This is a myth in the vulgar sense that it is in robust intellectual critique or even satire. a commonly held belief without solid foundation, a figment; but But Voltaire’s disdain for traditional religion had its dangers. it is also a myth in the technical sense – a moral tale that sustains He was surprisingly mealy-mouthed about the Roman persecu- and nourishes the culture and beliefs of those who hold it. tion of the early Christians and the Japanese persecution of six- Before assessing the myth, we should begin with a definition. teenth-century Catholics – he seemed to favour worldly pagan Tolerance has been traditionally defined as ‘the policy of patient persecutors over devout Christian martyrs. Moreover, Voltaire’s forbearance towards that which is not approved’.6 Tolerance is disdain for the Hebrew Scriptures and for Judaism helped to not the same as approval or indifference, for the tolerant person foster a new kind of anti-semitism.7 In Voltaire himself, these exercises restraint towards something that they dislike. A father strains of intolerance were kept in check, but in some later ratio- may be said to tolerate his son’s heavy metal music, for example, nalists they ran riot. As the historian Richard Popkin has pointed precisely because he dislikes it but refrains from banning it in the out, the basically tolerant deism of the American Revolution home. By contrast, intolerance involves the active attempt to stood in sharp contrast to the intolerant deism of the French suppress or silence the disapproved practice or belief. Of course, Revolution.8 In France, the deist revolutionaries launched a the means of suppression will vary greatly from context to con- fierce campaign of de-Christianisation during the Reign of text: a state may criminalise an activity and imprison or even Terror. Several thousand clergy were executed, and many more execute those who practise it; a voluntary organisation may expel were imprisoned. Even nuns were sent to the guillotine.9 Given an offender from membership; and polemicists may attempt to the right circumstances, deists could quickly forget Voltaire’s discredit or destroy an opposing viewpoint by subjecting it to commitment to tolerate those with whom one disagreed. vilification and abuse. In this paper, we will concentrate on polit- In this respect, the French Revolution established an ominous ical intolerance (the use of state coercion), and polemical precedent. For among the greatest figures in the secular rational- intolerance (the use of vitriol and stereotyping). ist tradition was Karl Marx. The movement that Marx founded In the first part of the paper, I will question the myth of sec- drew deeply from the well of radical Enlightenment contempt for ular tolerance by arguing that secularists have often resorted to traditional religion, and Marx was convinced that human eman- political and polemical intolerance. In the second half, I will cipation would require ‘the abolition of religion’.10 The militant suggest that the modern commitment to religious tolerance first atheism of Marx’s followers was to be the major source of emerged from within the Christian tradition. religious persecution in the world between 1917 and 1979. The Russian Revolution ushered in a period of repression and mar- The reality of secular intolerance tyrdom almost unprecedented in its scale. By 1939, not a single The roots of modern secularism are complex, but it is possible to monastery or convent remained open out of a thousand or more identify a continuous tradition of secular rationalist thought with which the Soviet period began. The number of churches was stemming from the radical Enlightenment of the eighteenth cen- reduced to barely a hundred, and thousands of clergy were arrest- tury. The Enlightenment was a complex phenomenon, and in ed and liquidated.11 In Communist China, things were just as bad. many places it had a distinctly Christian complexion. But radical According to one authority on religious persecution, the decade Enlightenment thinkers were fiercely anti-clerical and antagonis- of the Cultural Revolution in China (1966 to 1976) ‘was perhaps tic to the claims of revealed religion. Among the key figures in the largest intense persecution of Christians in history’.12 Even in this movement were the Dutch Jew, Spinoza, the English radical, contemporary China, Catholic priests and Protestant pastors John Toland, the French philosophes, Voltaire, Diderot, and often live in fear of arrest. Rousseau, and the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Some of The philosopher John Gray (himself a non-believer) has these men were deists, whilst others were atheists. But all recently highlighted the history of secular intolerance: emphatically rejected Christian claims to special divine revela- tion, and championed a sceptical and anti-supernaturalist world- The role of humanist thought in shaping the past century’s view.

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